


The Rain Is Not The Sea

by Hecate



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Codependency, F/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Soul Bond, Soul Bond Aftermath, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Unhealthy Relationships, Wanda Maximoff Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 17:31:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12304101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/pseuds/Hecate
Summary: A few words, a curse whispered on a battlefield, and the bond had snapped into place. As if it was real, as if it was right.[Life with and without a soul bond.]





	The Rain Is Not The Sea

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Одна дождинка - ещё не дождь](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15655623) by [fandom RDJ_and_Stark 2018 (fandom_Robert_Downey_Jr_2017)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandom_Robert_Downey_Jr_2017/pseuds/fandom%20RDJ_and_Stark%202018), [remontada](https://archiveofourown.org/users/remontada/pseuds/remontada)



The bond between them snaps in the middle of the fight against Thanos. For a moment, for a few seconds between a breath and a scream, Wanda thinks Tony is dead. Something inside of her goes silent then, hollow, and her magic stutters before it breaks free and burns the monsters surrounding her to ash and debris.

Then, he's there, a flash of red and gold, and he lands with a thud, the ground beneath her feet a tremor, a heartbeat. The faceplate opens without a sound, and she sees the worry on his face, the confusion.

"I thought you were dead," he says.

"Yeah," she replies, and she doesn't know if Tony hears the echo of his words in her answer. With the bond, he would have. But it's gone, she feels that now, that steel wire that bound them together, and she can't remember if the place where it was just moments ago used to be this empty before the both of them got trapped in the bond.

"We're free," she tells Tony, tries out the words and feels like she's lying.

He nods, and for a moment they just look at each other, lost. Then, the battle remembers them, and it's fire and bullets and magic and pain. Wanda fights. She doesn't know if Tony is still alive.

***

He isn't hers, anymore, and she isn't his.

***

Clint is happy for her, Steve is relieved.

Sam and Natasha don't say much but they never had before. Sam had watched her with Tony, careful and silent, and Wanda thinks he had understood pieces of what went on between them, and he had pitied them. Natasha had been different, is still different now, and Wanda wonders if she had just been glad that something brought them back together again, the bond just a necessary means.

But Clint is happy and Steve is relieved, and for a moment, an odd one at that, she is angry with them, angry because she lost something that was greater than her and greater than them. It had been horrible, too, that bond, and she remembers that, still feels how much she despised the connection to Tony, how it felt like love and longing and _home_.

“Things can get back to normal,” Clint says. Smiles at her all tight and worried. “You'll get over it.”

She almost asks him when things had ever been normal, what that had felt like. Was it the hours she spent under the bed, clinging to Pietro, staring at the bomb Stark made? Or the time she spent with Hydra, letting them change her, letting them do things to her? Or maybe the time after that, Ultron and the Avengers and the fight that split it all apart. Wakanda: maybe that had been normal.

“Of course,” she tells Clint.

She wonders where Tony is.

***

At least she never stopped being angry at him, Wanda thinks; at least she always got to keep that.

***

Tony comes to her a few days after the bond broke, walking into her room at the compound without knocking. She should be angry but isn't, blames the last few months for her easy acceptance of his behaviour.

"Hi," he says.

She nods, and watches as he takes in her room. She knows what he sees: A place that isn't a home, not anymore. A place that doesn't look like anybody is living in it, is alive in it. It's no surprise, it had been empty for quite a while, after all. She had spent some time there after Wakanda, but then the bond happened, and she had moved into Tony's home at first, a floor below Tony's rooms, and then she had moved upwards, like a social climber of a wholly different kind. She had moved into his place, into his bed, into his arms.

Wanda thinks her favourite hoodie is still in his lab.

"That stupid alien trickster is dead. Thor got a message from Asgard from Loki. Who got it from.... I don't really know. But yeah, dead. Like the bond." Tony shrugs. "So that explains that."

Wanda raises an eyebrow, thinks of Tony in the days after the bond fell into place, thinks of him ranting about science and magic and souls.

"Okay," Tony says, and for some reason it hurts that he can still read her face like this. "It doesn't explain anything at all. But it's what we got."

"And you're satisfied with that?" she asks him.

Tony sighs, sits down next to her, his body warm and solid against her side. They haven't touched since the bond broke, and it’s strange to feel him again, the familiarity a relief, and she wants to lean into him. She refuses to.

He moves away.

"Not really, but I don't see what we could do about it. It's not like we had any bright ideas before." He turns to her then, looks at her, and she longs to trace the lines of his face with her fingers again. "It's better now, isn't it?" he asks, offers.

She nods. "Yeah, it's better now."

***

She dreams of his palm and fingers splayed across her belly, dreams about his body against her back, dreams about breathing along with him.

***

They had argued more than once, had fought, really. About the bond, about the team, about her parents and the past and all the blame between him and her. Once, she had used her magic on him, right after a mission, the two of them on Iron Man's landing pad, Tony still in his suit. She had used her powers and she had brought Iron Man to his knees, had forced _Tony_ to his knees. Wanda had felt so powerful, just like she did when she let Hydra destroy parts of herself.

She thinks that Tony had been scared of her in that moment, must have been scared. She had been.

"Stop," he had said, and "Wanda."

She had reached out then, red clouds of magic still circling her hands like vultures, and she could have hurt him, could have ripped into his mind or burnt his body. Instead, her magic had fallen away when she touched his shoulder, had fallen away to leave her alone with him.

She still remembers the gauntlets coming up, the metal fingers so shockingly gentle when they touched her waist. Tony's face when Iron Man's faceplate opened up to reveal the man of skin and bones beneath the metal, so terribly open, still half-scared, but half something else, too. Something she hadn't been able to understand. She had leant down anyway, had fallen to her knees in front of him, just as much a broken doll as he had been.

"Wanda," he had said, and somehow her name had meant something more in that moment, had been as strong and tangible as the bond. "Wanda," and she had kissed him, on her knees with the city beneath them, she had kissed him and it had felt so very _right_.

She still kisses him like that in her dreams.

***

Vision had left shortly after the bond changed everything. Vision had left, and Wanda hadn't known how it would feel to miss him.

***

Wanda sees Tony with Pepper, and he's smiling at her, the kind of smile that could never have been for Wanda, no matter which life they were living. It's open, unguarded, and it's not a smile that belongs with _her_ Tony. But then Tony had never been hers, not truly, it had all been faked and forced. He has always been Pepper's, even when the bond had told them otherwise.

She sees him with Pepper, and she doesn't even know if Tony is still engaged to her or if Pepper called it off when Tony stopped kissing her, stopped touching her; when the bond pulled at him until he stepped away from Pepper and into Wanda's arms.

Wanda tries not to think about all that, just like she had back then. It was just another horrible part of the bond, another injury, and she hadn't known how to help Tony with it. A part of her even hadn't wanted to help, had been glad that Pepper was gone. She wonders if Tony had known that, wonders if he hated her for it. Probably.

But then, they had hated each other for a lot of things. Still hate each other for at least half of them, she guesses.

Pepper isn't smiling at Tony, keeps herself away from him, a rigid line of a body, and it hurts to watch them in some odd way, hurts to watch as Tony lets Pepper go, staring after her. He doesn't move for a while, a half-dead statue right there in his living room, and Wanda stays where she is, keeping guard until he comes alive again and walks to the elevator.

He'll go to the lab, Wanda knows this, he will go there and he will get lost until he's too tired to think anymore. But he won't be too tired to feel, and all the things he'll build, all the problems he'll solve, won't help him at all.

Sometimes, she thinks he isn't all that different to her.

***

She's lonely. She thinks he is, too.

***

Tony is out of the suit, his fingers dancing over a keyboard, his eyes on a computer screen. The suit is in sentry mode, a wall between the red and gold of it and Tony. It's a familiar moment, it's a blueprint of seeing Tony in flesh and blood instead of on a TV screen for the first time. She remembers slipping her magic into his mind months and months ago, remembers what she _did_ to him. He had told her what he saw back then, all those weeks ago, had told her about the bodies, and she had understood another little piece of him. But there are still so many fragments of his puzzle left.

She leaves him with Natasha, leaves the room. The suit is watching her. Back when she first met them all, when she saw the suit for the first time, she expected it to look dead without Tony inside of it to pull its strings. She had been wrong about that.

Wanda steps closer, the suit letting her, and she thinks of the day when Tony took her flying. It had been sunny and warm, and she had dreamt of Pietro the night before, had woken up with a cry and a shudder in Tony's arms. She doesn't remember how she made it through the night, only remembers flashes of Tony, remembers the morning and Tony and the suit and the sky and the wind in her hair.

She reaches out, spreads her fingers, and forces her magic down, away, forces it to be tame so she can touch without the ruin and disaster that clings to her powers. The metal is familiarly smooth against her palm, the light of the reactor slipping through her fingers. It makes her think of blood, it makes her think of Tony's chest beneath her palm, her hand not big enough to cover his scars.

She leans in, leans into the suit, and she doesn't even wonder about the subroutines that allow her to do it, about Friday watching or Tony finding out. She leans in and when the suit’s arms move to wrap itself around her, she knows it's Tony and not a ghost in the machine, knows he has seen her, and she doesn't mind, can't mind, only closes her eyes for the tiniest moment and feels almost safe.

***

She isn't able to find him in the dark anymore. It scares her.

***

The first time Wanda had slept in Tony's bed, they hadn't touched.

She had sat down, the blanket soft under her skin, and she had chosen the side closer to the door. Wanda had still been ready to leave then, had been ready to fight the bond that wrapped itself around them tighter and tighter, forcing them to come closer together so there would be room enough to _breathe_.

Tony had looked at her then, leaning against the door, and he had looked so lost, so broken. “Let’s switch,” he had said, and she had thought for a moment that she took his side of the bed before she had realized she had chosen Pepper's.

These days, she thinks the feeling that hit her in that moment, mean and sharp and forlorn, had been her heart breaking for him. Back then, she had nodded, had curled down where he usually slept. She had watched him then as he undressed, as he walked to the bed still wearing his shorts, pulling on a shirt as he went, covering up the scars.

She had seen them anyway.

Wanda had fallen asleep watching Tony by the softened light of the city sky making its way into the room, watching the rise and fall of his chest, thinking she could never sleep in that room with Tony. But she did.

When she had woken up, Tony had been the one watching her.

***

She has never been in love. There hadn't been enough time, not before Tony.

***

The world still hated her when they came back to fight Thanos, hated her throughout the months of it, pitied Tony when the bond between them came to light in the middle of it all. It still hates her now.

"It's because they fear you," Vision tells her after he returned. "Because they don't understand you."

It doesn't make her feel better, only shows her that she is different, that she doesn't belong with them. She had belonged with Tony for a while, belonged with him with a ferocity and certainty that was all made up and forced on her. 

She watches the news, she sees the graffiti on the streets, listens to the politicians talk about her as if she will never stop being a threat, as if that's all she is and could ever be. And a part of her wants to belong again, wants to know that somebody has to be there, no matter what happens.

Once upon a time that could have been Vision. Sometimes, Wanda tries to feel something for him again, tries to find their connection again. But it's gone, it's lost, and the hurt is distant, muted.

"They shouldn't fear you," Steve says, "Not after all you did for them."

_To_ them, too, but it feels as if he and Clint don't want to talk about that, can't talk about that. She understands. They want it to be easier than it is, want to move forward and keep on saving who they can. But sometimes, she just wants to slow down for a bit, wants to turn around and look back and see who she didn't save, see it all and let it burn through her. Maybe she is like Tony, in that way.

"Keep on fighting for them. That's all you can do," Tony tells her. They hardly talk these days, leave the room when the other one walks in. But he knows her in a way the others don't, sees her in that way, and maybe he feels as if he owes her this.

He smiles at her. "Try to do better." A shrug, a tired smile that's all teeth and media training. "They won't stop hating you, but hey, you get to be a superhero! Spandex included, if you want."

She laughs at that, has to laugh, and it's all stupid, it's all a mess; the demonstrations against her or Steve or Bucky, the nations that want them to stay away as their cities get attacked and their people die.

"Not the superhero they want..." she begins.

Tony ends the sentence for her. "But the one they need."

***

She told him about her parents, once. He told her about his mother.

***

The first time, he had been gentle, careful, almost scared. She had wondered, for a quiet moment between kisses, if he thought he was her first. He hadn't been, of course not. He hadn't been the first to press her into a bed or to stretch out beneath her, not the first to push into her body. She hadn't told him then, hasn't told him yet, and there is no reason for her to ever do so. He had been the first one that mattered, though.

So he had been gentle, and Wanda had _loved_ it.

The second time had been different, had been after a battle, her magic still too much like the ocean, her powers cresting in waves. He had stepped right into it, had pulled her close with shades of red exploding around them. Wanda doesn't remember much of the second time.

She had pushed Tony down the third time, had loved the way he had looked up at her, had loved the grip of his hands at her waist as she rolled her hips. He had called her beautiful and Wanda had believed him.

They had fucked in a hallway once, her legs wrapped around his waist, and she still remembers the fabric of his dress-shirt under her hands, soft and expensive. She thinks that he had told her he loved her in that hallway, in that moment, the words soft against her shoulder and in her ears. She thinks he did, but she can't be sure.

She had been on her knees for him, and Tony had looked at her as if he would kill for her. And Wanda knows, she _knows_ , that he would have.

In the kitchen, and she doesn't know if he thinks about it when he eats there now, when he makes coffee, when he's there and she isn't anymore, the whole place just his once more. She wonders if he still makes coffee and breakfast for two, wonders if he has to throw away parts of it. She hopes he is, and she doesn't quite remember when she became this cruel.

***

Tony had found Stephen Strange for her, a teacher to rein in her magic. Tony had given her control.

***

His side of the bed had become hers, not quite a haven but a place where she could sleep, where she could reach into the darkness and touch the warmth of his body. It had been good, at times, feeling him near, waking up in his arms and knowing he belonged with her. Other times, it was the worst thing she could imagine; she dreamt of her parents, Pietro, _home_ , and she had woken up with Tony heavy against her back, a cage of guilt and grief.

“I wish Stane was still alive,” she had told Tony once in a moment like that, the night shut out by the walls and yet pressing in on them. “It would feel better to hate him for what happened to my parents.”

A sigh in the darkness, a hand covering hers. Wanda had thought of Hydra and Barnes and had known that Tony understood.

Now, she wonders if he could still listen to the meaning in her words so easily or if it's all fading away, the things they know of each other, the chances to look at someone and _see_ them. 

Wanda tells herself not to care. 

But one night, when she wakes up and can still feel her mother's arms around her, she reaches for her phone and she calls him without thinking about it. 

"Wanda," he says, and he sounds tired, worried.

"I forgot how it felt when she hugged me," she tells him. "How could I forget that?"

He's silent then, and she buries herself beneath her blankets, the phone in her hand. She listens to him breathe. And falls asleep.

***

Friday still follows her orders in ways she doesn't with the others. Wanda isn't sure what to make of that.

***

"How do you invent weapons?" she had asked him once. She had been angry that day, angry because the anniversary of her parents' death passed her by and she had missed it, hadn't remembered because the mission had turned into a maze of days, uncountable and fading under the pressure of exhaustion. Angry, too, because Tony had almost killed himself during that mission, and she had felt him drop out of her awareness, away from her, and she had hated him for it.

He had turned to her, had looked at her for a long time before answering. "The same way you invent anything else, actually."

A few days later, she had been in his lab, reading through some amendments to the Accords while he worked on the schematics of a new suit prototype. She had looked up, sometimes, had looked at Tony, at the hologram glowing in front of him, painting shades of blue on his face. He had looked almost peaceful like this, focused and alive.

She could have left him like that. But the amendments had asked for the names of _children_ , and she hadn't known if Tony was fighting it. "Show me the bomb," Wanda had said.

He had looked away from the lines of light in front of him, had stared at her.

"The bomb that killed my parents," she had gone on as if Tony had needed an explanation.

And he had pulled up the blueprint, had blown it up until it filled the room, until it had taken her breath away. It hadn't looked like the weapon she had seen as a child, hadn't looked like that awful, ugly thing. Just lines of blue, circuitry and Tony's kind of magic. He had left her alone with it, and Wanda had spent a part of an eternity staring at it before she had asked Friday to turn it off.

Later, when Tony had fallen asleep next to her, his hand reaching for her body, she had realized that he had found out at some point what kind of bomb had destroyed her life, that he had cared enough. Wanda had leant in then, had kissed him, and she had dreamt of falling buildings and the heroes who save people from them.

***

He had talked Sokovia into letting her visit the ruins of her home, had held her hand when she decided not to go.

***

Wanda had hated seeing Tony with Steve or Clint, had hated the way his body seemed to lose its familiar shape, seemed to turn into something else. Something she hadn't been able to reach, not even with the bond, Tony wrapped up in distance and control. It had taken her hours to pull him back to her side, to get _Tony_ back.

She still hates seeing them together now.

They are all weapons, of a different kind but weapons nevertheless, and she waits for one of them to go off, for the truce to shatter now the bond between her and Tony is gone. They have no reason to stay together, they only have the Accords, still unsigned, and a past of trust and betrayal to keep them together. It's not enough, and Wanda knows it's just a matter of time before something gives under the pressure, until the first punches are thrown and the first of them leaves.

Wanda doesn't want to go back to Wakanda. She thinks of signing the Accords, fears Steve's disappointment, fears being left behind by him and Clint and Sam. She had almost done it weeks before. The bond had burned in her veins and heart and with it the certainty that she couldn't be without Tony anymore, that she would have to be if she didn't sign them, that politicians could destroy it all. Back then, Steve would have forgiven her, Wanda is sure of that. It wouldn't have been a choice, after all.

She doesn't know what to do with this life she is living now, not an Avenger but not a fugitive either, a state between waiting and still yearning to change the world. It's fragile, and Wanda thinks she'll hurt herself on its shards if it should ever break.

***

Stephen Strange had talked about breaking the bond. It had scared Wanda.

***

She had gone with Tony to a gala just once and she had hated it. Rich people had surrounded them, rich people as arrogant as Tony could be but lacking everything else that made him Tony. They had stared at them, at her, and she had known that they hated her for what she was, hated them for Tony's audacity to bring her, his audacity to be with her. Their relationship had made it into the papers after all. The bond had only made it in pieces, in speculations and rumours.

Tony had held on to her hand, had guided her through the maze of people, had whispered names and connections into her ear. “She fights for girls without money and connections,” he had said, and Wanda had looked at the woman, at her expensive dress and make-up, at the way she stood and held her place. She had told herself to remember her.

“The two of them have enough influence to sway a couple of votes when the UN discusses the Accords,” and the couple Tony had talked about looked like all the others: tasteful clothes, perfect shell, and Wanda had wondered how Tony could tell them all apart.

“This one,” he had said, pointing at a man with blonde hair and perfect teeth, “this one hates Inhumans, hates people with powers.” She had frowned. Later, he had officially introduced Wanda to the very same man. She had watched them, the fake smiles and pleasantries, the barely covered threats. “Know who your enemies are,” Tony had said once the man was gone. “If you don't, things explode in spectacular ways. The light show might be pretty, the consequences aren't.”

Wanda had thought back to the team falling apart, thought back to fighting Tony for Steve, for herself, for a stranger with a metal arm and blood on his hands. And she had agreed.

***

“See you later,” Tony had said before the last battle against Thanos, just like he had all the other times before. Wanda had smiled, just like she had done every single time.

***

Tony is in the kitchen, a rare visit at the compound. He looks tired, almost old, and a few weeks ago she would have leant against his back, would have wrapped her arms around him. For a moment, she can see herself doing it again, feels his warm body against hers, feels him straightening up because he can do that for her, with her.

She misses him, and it's sudden and painful, and Wanda doesn't know what to do with the feeling, and she doesn't want it. But it's there, and it's still there when Tony turns around and sees her.

He freezes.

She tries to smile for him, tries to turn around and leave for him, for them, but she can't.

“Hi,” she says instead.

“Hey,” he replies, and it's quiet and subdued.

Wanda walks through the room then, crosses the distance to Tony, and she doesn't quite feel like herself when she leans against the table next to him, staring into nothing. Feels too much like herself, too.

”Bad day?” Wanda asks. It's a stupid question, it's a cliché, but she can't think of anything else to say.

Tony shrugs. “A few of those, actually.”

He looks like it. 

It's Pepper, Wanda thinks, Pepper and the Accords and Steve and the ruins of the Avenger. It's the bond, too, the memory of it, its absence, and she hates how she feels so much of that, too.

“Yeah,” she agrees.

Tony looks at her. She wonders what he sees, has thought about that so often. He smiles. And Wanda sees the moment he breaks, the moment everything becomes just this tiny bit too much. She almost expects him to walk away. Instead, he reaches out for her, pulls her in, and she goes, her body easy in his arms. 

Tony kisses her.

It's familiar, and it's new, and he is shaking and suddenly she is crying. It's not what she wanted, not any of it, and it's not what she wants. But it's theirs now, she knows this with a sharp certainty, and it's so much worse than the bond.

“I love Pepper,” he says when they break apart.

Wanda nods. She knows, dear God, she _knows_ , and maybe she hates him for it, could hate him for it.

"And I don't love you," she replies.

He smiles then, and the curve of his lips is a parody of happiness. "I will never be with her again."

It's a fact, solid and inescapable and cruel. And Wanda thinks that she could reach into his mind and find Pepper and take her out of it, replace Pepper with herself. But she doesn't want that space and she's trying to be better with what she can do.

With what she did, too.

"I'm..." she begins but stops. She's not sorry, that's not quite what she feels. 

Wanda doesn't know how to give words to the odd pain she feels for him, to the relief and the hope. She trails the lines of his face with a finger instead, the lines of his neck, and she wants to pull him close to kiss him again. 

'Be mine,' she thinks of saying, 'be mine again,' but she stays silent. Neither of them has the right to utter these words, neither of them should _want_ to say them. But they are there, lodged into her heart like a knife, like a bullet, and she sees them reflected on Tony's face.

***

“Don't lose yourself,” Steve had said when she had left to live with Tony. Wanda had laughed and she had known it was too late.

***

They end up in her room, in her bed. Tony's kisses are stranger here, surrounded by a life she lived mostly without Tony, a life she lived before the bond.

"Tony," she whispers into his skin, and she lets her magic dance across his body. He lets her, moves with her, and she thinks he isn't afraid of what she can do, isn't afraid even though he doesn't trust her. She wonders if this is what love feels like. She doubts it. Love is supposed to be better than that.

Wanda thinks, for the briefest moment, that distance would help them, distance would be a good idea, a smart choice. But Tony is kissing her, Tony is touching her, Tony is _there_.

And she isn't willing to let go.

***

A few words, a curse whispered on a battlefield, and the bond had snapped into place. As if it was real, as if it was right. 


End file.
